Hey All,
I am buying some 2020s for my first born, and will plan to have about 400 bottles or so planned. My wife doesn’t have the stomach to have another big wine storage in our home, so I am thinking of commercial fridge for the garage. Since it gets hot here (Vegas), it needs to be a commercial one, even with our garage being insulated.
Any advice on the long term storage in regards to colder than 50. One of the long term members on here has a great cellar of old Burg, many of which I have tasted, and they are kept at 47.
I plan to keep the wines there for 15-20 years, simply due to the fact that It not legally cool to let the kid sip on wines before he’s old enough. Unless I move to Wisconsin, in which case I have heard its cool.
Anyway, all welcome advice. I have no problem keeping water/humidity in the fridge. Just more looking at the colder temps being a thing for the long term. I dont want to be saddled with $27k worth of crap. I am buying quality wine of course, just dont want to get screwed over storage. And there isnt great storage options here in vegas.
If you are going to use it exclusively for storing wines for 15-20 years, you don’t need to have your wines in Las Vegas. They can be anywhere until they are in their drinking window. So you can certainly at least entertain the idea of offsite storage and see if that is cost effective. Find a relatively low cost option that has things like redundancy and backup generators. They will all have better security than your garage.
It also saves you space in your garage and convenience if you might ever move during that period of time - your wine wouldn’t have to move with you.
Personally, I don’t like the idea of colder temperatures for the entire aging process. It obviously can make a wine mature more slowly, but all that means is you have to age it longer to reach the same level of maturity - i.e. if your wine normally needs 20+ years to mature, storing at 45 might mean you have to wait 25-30 years. I prefer a normal aging process for most of the time, and then if you really want to extend the drinking window for an extended time, put your now mature wines into a colder environment for the remainder. They reach normal maturity, but you extend their plateau of peak drinking.
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Great advice Chuck
Store it somewhere offsite and secure.
And insure it. Should be an easy rider to your house insurance.